A Blog About Stock Photography. John specializes in shooting stock photos including a mix of funny animal pictures with anthropomorphized pets (including dogs, cats, cows, elephants, monkeys and more), and concept stock photos for business and consumer communications. John's site includes interviews with photographers and leaders in the stock photo community as well as numerous articles on photography, digital imaging, and the stock photo business.

Monday, December 12, 2016

A Rooster Crowing A Dawn Stock Photo

A rooster crowing at dawn makes a great stock photo for illustrating the concepts of new beginnings, getting started, and important announcements.

A Rooster Crows At DawnWhen any of think of a rooster crowing we immediately
picture a rooster, crowing at dawn, and standing on a wooden fence post. We
also instinctively know that a crowing rooster is a signal that the day is
starting and that hard working people are rousing from their beds and getting
to work. As a stock image, a rooster crowing at sunrise offers the power of the
unconscious familiarity that we all have with both the visual and the concepts
that are represented.

A Rooster On The Road
With the above thoughts in mind a rooster crowing stock
photo as been one that I have contemplated creating for several years, but have
just never gotten my act together in finding and photographing a rooster. Fast
forward to a couple of weeks ago when I was in Kyrgyztan on a photo trip with
Jeremy Woodhouse.We were taking a
morning tour of a small village when I spotted a rooster on the road. I
managed to get five or six shots of the big guy before moving on. Later, on
that same trip, but this time in Uzbekistan, I got some great images of a
colorful sunset.

Roosters, Sunrises, Fences And Photoshop
Back from the trip, and in my Sausalito studio, I picked the
best of the rooster captures, stripped it out, and manipulated it to have its
beak wide open. I dropped the rooster shot into one of the sunset shots. I used
a series of adjustment layers, Hue and Saturation, Curves, and Color Balance to
make the lighting on the rooster fit the background image. I found a fence
shot, also photographed in Kyrgyztan…on the same morning as I photographed the
rooster…stripped it out, and placed it into the composite. I positioned it to
make it appear that the rooster was standing on the fence post. Again I used
several adjustment layers to match the lighting and color of its new
surroundings.

The Rooster In My Imagination
Finally, in my archives I selected a star field image and
faded it into the top of the composite.The whole process took several hours and a lot of fiddling with, but in
the end I was able to come up with a rooster crowing at sunrise stock photo that
perfectly matched the visual I had held in my imagination all of these years.

Announcements, New Beginnings And Time Issues
The crowing rooster image was composed to allow plenty of
copy space and cropping options. And speaking of copy, depending on the
headline and body text included, the image can serve to illustrate such diverse
ideas as announcements, new beginnings and/or time issues.

Blend Images And Royalty Free Stock Photos
The next question is what to do with the image. I will be
uploading it to Blend Images for distribution. I, however, am still struggling
with whether to put it in as a Royalty Free image or a Rights Managed one. My
heart is always with RM because I started out as an RM photographer and I
believe my images are worth more money that the prices generally charge for
RF…but the audience for RM images has dropped in size to a mere fraction of the
audience for RF images…and Getty now routinely licenses RM images at microstock
prices. Oh well.In his case I am counting on a big audience and am submitting the rooster image to the Royalty Free collection.

32 comments:

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